Explanation:
Dates
1807-1910
Where
Western Territories Of The United States
Events
Indian Removal Act
Klondike Gold Rush
The Lewis And Clark Expedition
War Of 1812
Louisiana Purchase
Monroe Doctrine
Mexican American War
Transcontinental Railroad
Homestead Act
Kansas-Nebraska Act
California Gold Rush
Pony Express
Battle Of The Alamo
The Sand Creek Massacre
French And Indian War
The Oregon Territory
The Oregon Trail
Manifest Destiny
Westward Expansion Articles
Explore articles from the History Net archives about Westward Expansion
» See all Westward Expansion Articles
Westward Expansion summary: The story of the United States has always been one of westward expansion, beginning along the East Coast and continuing, often by leaps and bounds, until it reached the Pacific—what Theodore Roosevelt described as "the great leap Westward." The acquisition of Hawaii and Alaska, though not usually included in discussions of Americans expanding their nation westward, continued the practices established under the principle of Manifest Destiny.
Even before the American colonies won their independence from Britain in the Revolutionary War, settlers were migrating westward into what are now the states of Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as parts of the Ohio Valley and the Deep South. Westward expansion was greatly aided in the early 19th century by the Louisiana Purchase (1803), which was followed by the Corps of Discovery Expedition that is generally called the Lewis and Clark Expedition; the War of 1812, which secured existing U.S. boundaries and defeated native tribes of the Old Northwest, the region of the Ohio and Upper Mississippi valleys; and the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forcibly moved virtually all Indians from the Southeast to the present states of Arkansas and Oklahoma, a journey known as the Trail of Tears.
In 1845, a journalist named John O’Sullivan coined the term "Manifest Destiny," a belief that Americans and American institutions are morally superior and therefore Americans are morally obligated to spread those institutions in order to free people in the Western Hemisphere from European monarchies and to uplift "less civilized" societies, such as the Native American tribes and the people of Mexico. The Monroe Doctrine, adopted in 1823, was the closest America ever came to making Manifest Destiny official policy; it put European nations on notice that the U.S. would defend other nations of the Western Hemisphere from further colonization.
